100 years ago in The Saratogian: Feb. 10

Sunday, Feb. 10, 1918

St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church is “packed to the doors” this afternoon for a special service honoring the 118 members of the congregation currently serving in the U.S. military, The Saratogian reports.

A “very large” service flag is draped over the choir balcony before Rev. George M. Murray of Troy delivers a patriotic address.

“We are living in an age of many evils and oppressions,” Murray says, “days of injustice and hypocrisy, days when to lie and to steal seem plausible; but what is there that can be conceived to be more horrible, more inhuman, more cruel than the terrible conflict raging in Europe today?”

Murray recalls that the U.S. strove to remain neutral after the European war broke out in the summer of 1914, but “blow after blow was struck to our sovereign rights until the hour arrived when it was a question for us either to fight for honor’s sake or cease to be a nation among nations.”

Advertisement

The U.S. declared war on Germany last April, taking the side of England and France. “We are not fighting England’s battles; nor are we struggling for France alone,” Murray insists, “We are in reality in a war which in the fullest sense is our war….We want to save ourselves, our sovereign rights, to save all and everything that a nation in honor prizes.

“Ought we not proud in a special manner of our dear Catholic boys who have so eagerly sailed away to fight hand in hand with a nation which once hated everything Catholic?...We are now fighting for France who hated God, France who banished the priest and the nun from the land, who forbade the little children to use the sacred name of Jesus. Again I say the Golden Rule is part of our lives and with France we will gladly fight.”

Catholic Americans “are overflowing with a spirit of love and patriotism,” Murray says, “They love their country next to God and they feel that their country is worthy of their lives.”

Pleas for Armenian aid

“Stricken Armenia” is the subject of an illustrated lecture given tonight by Edgar Sagatelian at First Methodist Episcopal Church, where “the auditorium was filled to its capacity, and all were interested to the last.”

Sagatelian claims that “At least 1,000,000 Armenians in Turkey have perished during the past two years from massacre, deportation, exposure, starvation and disease. Over 2,000,000 are now homeless and in dire distresss.”

The Turkish-ruled Ottoman Empire is one of Germany’s allies in the world war. Sagatelian urges audience members to give seventeen cents apiece each day to save Armenian refugees.